Zip Zester
People's Choice Award
Designer: GrassRoots Industries
Machinery Manufacturer:Battenfeld
Materials: EMS Grivory
Molder: Cashmere Molding
Moldmaker: Questech Unlimited; China Monicom
Product Description:
The spin zester was designed for the professional chef or culinarian to safely and effortlessly remove only the desired zest without pith from citrus fruit. Traditional zest removal involves holding the fruit in one hand while managing a sharp rasp like tool with the other. Without proper technique and skill, the result can be unacceptable. Either the pith below the zest is included or the operator ends up cutting themselves. The spin zester eliminates these issues by controlling the orientation of the fruit to the rasp while simultaneously removing the hands from the zest area. This is achieved by feeding the fruit past a spring loaded stainless steel micro screen. To use the spin zester, secure the base to a flat surface using the suction cup lever. Retract the drive rod and pin block. Move the zester arm out of the way to install the fruit onto the pin block. Manually turn the crank handle to feed the fruit past the micro screen. The zester arm maintains the proper pressure against the fruit to ensure high quality zest is produced. An additional benefit to this design is that nearly 100% of the fruit zest is quickly removed from its skin.
Why is the product innovative?
Zest – noun /’zest/ 1. Invigorating, keen excitement, gusto, added interest: a zest for living 2. Something added to give flavor, the skin of an orange, lemon or other citrus fruit-Both definitions apply to this innovative new tool. A spin zester is to zest preparation, as the automobile was to transportation. Gone are the days of scraping a citrus fruit by hand on a flat plane. Quick efficient generation of zest broadens the food enthusiast scope and repertoire. The spin zester consists of 3 main components. Each of the components is unique in their own way. These parts consist of a composite base, a variable tension spring arm and an over molded micro etched stainless steel screen. In addition to the main components, there are 7 additional injection molded parts that contributed to simplify the design. This elegant design allows the culinarian ease of use, simple to clean and significantly greater zest efficiency. The composite base is a one piece molding of EMS Grivory 60% glass filled polyamide. This part consolidated 5 individual parts in early prototypes to a sleek monocoque. The low water absorption nature of the Grivory material coupled with its high strength made it an ideal choice for the base. To achieve a one piece molding, a complex mold consisting of multiple slides and lift cores was designed. There are holes in all three axis (x,y,z) requiring complex movement. To assure proper gating, a mold flow analysis was done before the gate was located. The variable tension spring arm was designed to maintain the optimal pressure between the zester screen and the fruit. Too much pressure and pith would be cut and too little would not produce zest. The arm is molded out of Delrin 100 for its flexural fatigue properties. Initial designs were evaluated using FEA (finite element analysis) with SolidWorks Simulation Premium. The goal was to evaluate both spring rate and fatigue life. The final design has a curved tapered beam that serves as an integral spring. The stainless steel screen is photo etched to create the blade tines in the flat blade form. To take advantage of the pressing nature of an injection molding machine, the blade injection mold was designed to simultaneously over mold the screen as well as bends the tines into position to serves as blades. This eliminates the blade formation as a secondary operation and provides blades in a just in time fashion. The formed screens are inserted into a slot with 0.001” tolerance just prior to injection. The over mold material is EMS Grivory 50% glass filled. All parts were designed using SolidWorks Premium CAD software. The entire assembly was designed with snap fits to eliminate assembly tools. Initial prototypes were 3D printed and final functional prototypes were produced in glass filled nylon using the SLS (selective laser sintering) process.
